Archive for the ‘GOP’ Category

The results are in from Saturday’s “First in the South” Republican primary in South Carolina, and what we saw there has caused me to reflect on the importance of staying informed.

Newt Gingrich won South Carolina with about 41% of the vote. As recently as the previous Tuesday, he’d been polling at around 21%. If you remember, he had experienced a surge in his candidacy back in November and early December after some strong debate performances in which he’d especially gotten a chance to attack the moderators. This seems to have been what happened Saturday as well. The former Speaker is at his best when he’s attacking the media and showcasing his rhetorical skills, and the debates last week allowed him the opportunity to do both.

And the voters respond. He is envisioned as being able to out-debate President Obama, he is given sympathy by a Republican electorate that rightly detests the mainstream media, and his record and his actual policy proposals fall by the wayside, which is a shame.

What really prompted this post was seeing a reporter tweet that “SC Exit polls show Gingrich edge with conservatives, Tea Party & religious voters.” I took this to mean: voters who identify themselves as conservatives have either forgiven or forgotten Newt’s bizarre record of aligning himself with liberals on issues like Climate Change and attacking conservatives on issues like Paul Ryan’s Medicare reform proposal; voters who identify themselves as Tea Party members have either forgiven or forgotten Newt’s (somewhat reluctant) support of TARP and his endorsement and praise of RomneyCare; and voters who believe their President should be a strong Christian have forgiven or forgotten Newt’s various personal moral failings.

My point is not necessarily to bash Newt, but to bring up facts about his candidacy that might get overlooked after a rousing media-bashing debate. He may be a great debater (or not), and he may hate the media with a righteous indignation (or not), but his record (especially over the past decade+) should give Republicans pause, and the lack of specifics in his proposals should concern those voters who are naturally suspicious of politicians’ vague promises. And, lastly, his inability to even appear on the ballot in multiple states and his significant lag behind Obama in national polls should probably prevent all but his most loyal supporters from taking his candidacy seriously.

If we are researching these candidates and have a solid understanding of their history and positions, we won’t be so quick to vote for someone based on their Presidential looks or ability to entertain us. Stay motivated and stay informed.

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Davis Hipps has gone rogue with his own blog, votepaul.wordpress.com. His first post was nothing more than a cheap bait and hook technique. In it, he promised that his subsequent posts would reveal 7 reasons to support Ron Paul for President. Well I must admit that I was hooked from the first day and have eagerly waited for each daily posting like Oliver Twist begging for more. Davis is a gifted wordsmith and his prose, written candy. It is wonderful to see him use his gifts and talents for such a noble cause.

Furthermore, he is spot on in his assessments thus far and his reasons have mass appeal. If you want to learn something, jump on over to his blog right now.

If you are the type that likes to get the whole season of a television series on DVD to watch the episodes back to back, then you might be well suited to wait 5 more days until the entire series is complete.

If you are new to the Ron Paul Revolution then you should probably get started now. It might take some research and soul searching on each point before you are ready to digest the next course of this banquet of wisdom and paradigm shift.

As the series gets closer to an end, please remember what my kids’ gymnastics coach tells them each week, “It’s okay to cry!” when you realize that for the past 40 years we have let the mass media spoon feed us false premises, damaging opinions and party rhetoric. When you realize that neither democrat nor republican politicians have helped the American people one scintilla and that all the candidates in the race, with one exception, Obama included, are ostensibly the same. Their policies are all tweaking around the edges as we sink deeper and deeper into trouble and prepare to leave our children with mountains of debt and no liberties with which to affect any change.

It is time now to do what is right and take a bold stand and support Ron Paul for President, before its too late.

A few notes: Michele Bachmann and Jon Huntsman have both released economic plans of their own, but I didn’t include them in the chart because their campaigns have been polling less than 5% for some time now. Their plans are linked to their names in the previous sentence. Rick Santorum has not released a detailed plan but has covered some general principles here. Also worth mentioning is that every plan (with the exception of Huntsman’s) eliminates the Estate Tax (often referred to within the plans as the “Death Tax”), so I didn’t bother including that in the spreadsheet. And finally, it’s important to note that the Cain plan is predominantly a Tax Plan, the Paul plan is predominantly a Spending Plan, and the others are both more vague and more inclusive about both aspects.

Cain

Gingrich

Paul

Perry

Romney

Personal Income Tax Rate

9% in phase 1, 0% in phase 2

15%

Unchanged

20%

Unchanged

Deductions for Charity

Everyone

Everyone

Unchanged

Families under $500K

Unchanged

Deductions for Home Ownership

Unclear

Everyone

Unchanged

Families under $500K

Unchanged

State/Local Deductions

No one

No one

Unchanged

Everyone

Unchanged

Payroll Taxes

Eliminated

Eventually replaced w/ personal accounts

Unchanged

Unchanged

Unchanged

Tax on Interest Income

Eliminated

Unchanged

Eliminated

Unchanged

Eliminated for taxpayers with adjusted gross income under $200,000

Earned Income Credit & Child Tax Credit

Eliminated

Unchanged

Unchanged

Unspecified

Unchanged

Benefits from Capital Gains Tax Elimination

Everyone

Everyone

Everyone

Only long-term gains eliminated

Only taxpayers with adjusted gross income under $200,000

Corporate Rate

9% in phase 1, 0% after that

12.5%

15%

20%

25%

New National Sales Tax Rate

9% in phase 1, 30% after that

N/A

N/A

N/A

N/A

First Year Spending Cuts

Unspecified

Unspecified

$1Trillion

$100 Billion

$20 Billion

Year Budget is balanced

Unspecified

Unspecified

2015

2020

Unspecified

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In my last post, I listed some things that voters might like about Rick Perry, especially Republican voters since we’re in the primary season. In this post, I will discuss some of the mitigating factors surrounding these reasons, and why they may not, perhaps even should not, be enough for Perry to win the nomination of his party.

Elected Lieutenant Governor of Texas under George W. Bush in 1998, Perry was effectively promoted when Bush became President in January 2001. He’s since been elected Governor three times in his own right, and in all of that time has presided over significant economic growth, especially when compared to the rest of the country as a whole. This is clearly a good thing for Texas, though how much this growth can be attributed to Governor Perry and his policies is up for debate. Critics claim Texas is largely benefiting from the higher oil/gas prices which hurt the rest of the nation, and even supporters admit that Perry hasn’t so much promoted growth as he has refrained from hindering it. There is also some concern that when recent immigrants (both legal and illegal) are factored out, “the share of working-age natives in Texas holding a job has declined in a manner very similar to the nation a whole.” In other words, there is evidence to suggest that Texas’s economic success has been greatly exaggerated.

On the 10th Amendment, Governor Perry made headlines two years ago regarding the state sovereignty resolution linked to in the previous post. Most of the headlines related to the media’s characterization of the resolution as advocating Texas’s secession. My point here is not to highlight the media’s desire to generate headlines through sensationalizing, but to point out that Perry’s association with the 10th Amendment is not always positive. And while Republicans do indeed value states’ rights and the 10th Amendment, it is hardly a stand-out issue for Perry. Congresswoman Bachmann has long been associated with the “Tenther” movement, and Congressman Paul has been advocating for states’ rights for years.

On that note, I need hardly mention that his opposition to ObamaCare and abortion are standard (and therefore not stand-out) Republican issues. And, while Perry has again made headlines for his stance against the Fed by saying another round of quantitative easing would be “almost treasonous,” (and even Gingrich has begun speaking against the Fed), Ron Paul has been the leader on this issue for decades, having written books on the subject as early as 1981.

It is also widely known that all of the major candidates claim to be Christians, be they Baptist (Cain, Paul), Catholic (Gingrich, Santorum), Evangelical Lutheran (Bachmann), non-denominational Protestant (Perry), or Mormon (Huntsman, Romney).

In short, in terms of positive reasons that he should be President, Governor Perry doesn’t really stand out. He does, however, stand out strongly in terms of negatives. His comments during the most recent Republican debate reflecting his views on illegal immigration are starkly at odds with the other Republicans in the running. He also seems to have no real foreign policy to speak of, as evidenced by his answer to the 3AM question, again in the most recent debate. At a time when America is fighting at least two commonly-acknowledged wars in the Middle East, this strikes me as a major handicap, especially if he were to make it to the general election. All-in-all, it seems to me, the pros for Rick Perry are comparatively weak, and the cons are far too strong for someone running for the Presidency.

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Ren has posed the question on the show a couple of times, and I know he’s asked members of the Republican Party in private, “What do you like about Rick Perry?” He has also said that he has yet to receive a satisfactory answer, so I’ve tried to do some digging on my own in hopes of finding these reasons that people, for whatever reason, haven’t been able to articulate. Here are some possible answers:

You may appreciate Perry’s strong advocacy of the 10th Amendment to the Constitution, which declares “the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.”